Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim (6 page)

Thank goodness we were able to settle out of court.

Still, I didn’t want my doorman to think I can’t get a date, so I fibbed and added, “No boyfriend that I’m ready to give a key to.”

He winked. “Smart girl.”

I nodded like the worldly-wise woman that I am not.

Instead, I’m the woman who makes misleading statements in order to validate her social life to a doorman.

I was still wondering if my phony face of maturity looked too constipated when he snorted. “This is the shortest list we have!”

He must have seen the sheepish look on my face because he followed it up with, “But this is good, tight, secure—like it should be. This is my kind of list.”

That’s right, my list is secure.

Unlike me.

Fawning

By Lisa

It was an ordinary day until I found a fawn in the garage.

Don’t worry, this has a happy ending.

Here’s what happened. For fun and adventure, I ride Buddy The Pony with two girlfriends who also ride, Nan and Paula. Well, the three of us cowgirls had just come back from our ride, exhausted. We weren’t exhausted because we ride so hard. We rarely trot and never canter, so what we do is sit on the horses’s backs while we talk. But sometimes our horses wander far apart from each other, as we have little or no control over them, and rather than stop talking, we merely shout our entire conversation to each other, which can be exhausting.

We’re women, and we call this exercise.

I don’t know what the horses call it, and I’m not asking.

After the ride, I went home, then to the car, which is when I found the little fawn. It was as adorable as Bambi, and seemed weak but otherwise calm, curled up by my car tire. Its lovely black eyes glistened, fringed with eyelashes I could kill for, and it had cute little white spots on its back. Its legs were long and knobby, and it couldn’t have weighed more than ten pounds. It looked at me, I looked at it, and then I did what any woman would do.

Lisa’s surprise visitor

I called my girlfriends.

Nan and Paula came over, and we all stood in a menopausal semicircle, oohing, ahhing, and worrying about the little cartoon fawn.

“Mommy, can I keep him?” I asked, and it seemed like a great idea. I have only four dogs and two cats, which is thirty-five pets shy of hoarding.

Plus I have no deer.

I could understand not keeping it if I already had a deer, but I was fresh out. And to be honest, I love deer. I didn’t mind when they ate my plants, since they were hungry and they lived here first, and after a while, I just stopped planting anything.

If you can’t beat ’em, quit.

Also I remembered reading a Monty Roberts book about how he kept deer as pets. I bet he could even ride a deer if he wanted. If I rode a deer, I would do it with my girlfriends and we would talk and talk and talk until we were exhausted.

But back to the story.

Paula works with her husband, who’s a vet, and thank God, she knows a lot about animals. She said, “We should call in animal rescue and see what they think we should do.”

Nan nodded. She used to raise goats, and she knows a lot about animals, too. She said, “Good idea. I have a number in my phone.”

So I watched the little fawn and imagined making it my pet while they called all manner of rescue services, vets, and knowledgeable friends. I stood hoping nobody answered, so I could keep the deer. I was already thinking of names for my new pet. She was a girl, I could tell by her long eyelashes, which is how you know.

The obvious choice for a name was Bambi. I couldn’t think of another name, except Thumper. The only original name I could think of was Fawn, and I guessed I could call her Fawn Hall, which is the type of joke that amuses me and fellow baby boomers and nobody else.

Paula and Nan hung up the phone, both having gotten excellent advice. We should try to give the fawn some water, and though I didn’t have a baby bottle, I had a big syringe (without the needle) that I use for giving Buddy medicine. So Nan held the fawn while I gave her water from a syringe, and if you don’t know I was lactating, you’re new around here.

Then, per directions, we took her out to the woods, where the other deer live. The animal rescue people said to check on her later, and if she was gone, that meant she’d found another mother.

So we did, and she must have, because she was gone.

But I miss Fawn Hall Scottoline.

And if she comes back, I’ll have her cradle ready.

Starry Starry Night

By Lisa

I should have mentioned that Mother Mary is living with me for the summer. We’re in Day 16, which is now a countdown, like the Iran hostage crisis.

I’m waiting for the cable company to rescue me.

Until they get cable to the cottage, Mother Mary watches TV at my house, with the volume on eighty-six. That’s the highest number of the volume on my TV, and it’s not a number you should know. It’s like having a car that goes 130 miles an hour. You don’t need to drive that fast.

Mother Mary does.

UNDERSTAND?

ALSO, ARE YOU GETTING UP?

So, here’s what I’ve learned:

Matlock
starred Andy Griffith, not Dick Van Dyke. I had previously thought they were the same person, but they’re not.

There are still shows with laugh tracks, and Mother Mary loves every one.

The fake laughter on the laugh track of
Everybody Loves Raymond
erupts in bogus hilarity every thirty seconds, like manufactured waves at a water park. If you’re trying to work while the show is on, let’s say if you’re a writer, you’ll find yourself waiting for the next wave, like a dripping faucet.

And the joke will be on you.

Ha-ha.

If
House
is on, Mother Mary has already seen it. This is also true of
Seinfeld, Two and a Half Men,
and
Law & Order,
regardless of whether the victims were special.

Oddly, that’s a good thing.

Mother Mary will watch only shows she’s already seen. If you ask her why, she’ll say, “DON’T QUESTION ME.”

But you will, anyway.

Because YOU HAVE A HARD HEAD.

Last night, so she could see something new, I suggested that we rent a movie on TV. She likes comedies, and
The Hangover
was on, so we sat down to watch it together. If you think that a movie with profanity and nudity might not be appropriate for my mother, it’s time you knew the truth.

As soon as the movie begins, she asks, “IS THAT A REAL TIGER?”

I answer, “YES.”

Next question, “IS THAT A REAL BABY?”

“YES.”

Third question, “IS THAT BABY REALLY CRYING?”

“NO. HOLLYWOOD WOULD NEVER MAKE A BABY CRY FOR MONEY.”

“BUT IT LOOKS LIKE IT’S REALLY CRYING.”

“THEY DO IT WITH SPECIAL EFFECTS,” I tell her, because it’s okay to lie to your mother if it will prevent a cardiac event.

She looks at me sideways. She’s hard of hearing, but she’s not stupid.

Ten minutes into the movie, it strikes me that
The Hangover
is not a great choice for her plot-wise, because she asks, “WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT GUY’S TOOTH? WHERE DID THE CHICKEN COME FROM? WHY IS THAT GUY IN THE TRUNK NAKED?”

I want to say, “DON’T QUESTION ME.”

But I answer, and we spend the remainder of the movie screaming questions and answers at each other, after which we’re both exhausted, so we call my brother to have him FedEx her hearing aids.

Then it’s time for bed, and it turns out that Mother Mary likes a beer before she goes to sleep. I have no problem with this. She survived throat cancer and The Depression, and if she wants a brewski before bedtime, it’s fine with me. She drinks Bud Lime, the choice of frat boys everywhere, and that’s okay too.

So we sit in blissful silence, petting the dogs while she drinks her beer, and I feel torn. I could let her sleep upstairs in my house, but then she wouldn’t get used to sleeping in the cottage, which is right in my backyard. The time it takes her to drink the beer gives me a chance to think, and I decide I have to stick with the plan. So I get her into her lab coat, which you might remember from previous books is her favorite outfit, and walk her down to the cottage, holding her bony little hand so the dogs don’t trip her. And she makes her way through the grass, which is wet and soaks her sandals, and there’s a chill in the air, under a night full of stars.

I point them out, and she looks up and smiles agreeably, though she can’t see a single one.

And I get her inside her cottage, turn on all the lights, and make sure she can lock the door from the inside, which she does. Through the window, she gives me a brave thumbs-up, like an octogenarian astronaut.

“LOVE YOU, MOM,” I tell her.

She can’t hear, but she knows what I said.

The Many Homes of Mother Mary

By Lisa

Mother Mary makes everything an adventure, even a trip to the food store. And by adventure, I mean fistfight.

We begin in the produce aisle, where she’s looking for bean salad. There’s a counter that contains all sorts of prepared salads, including a five-bean salad, but Mother Mary eyes it with disdain.

“No,” she says simply.

“What’s the matter with it? It has five beans. That’s two more than anybody needs.”

“It doesn’t have pinto.”

“What difference does that make?” I have no idea what a pinto bean even looks like. I thought a pinto was a car.

“I like pinto. I want pinto.”

“Then add some,” I say.

Mother Mary throws up her hands. “If I wanted to cook, I wouldn’t come to the food store.”

Fine. I always thought that people who go to food stores then go home to cook, but what do I know?

We move on to the tubs of chicken salad, and there’s another problem. “No,” she says again.

“Why?”

“Too busy.”

I don’t understand. Chicken salad isn’t busy unless it’s wearing plaid pants with a polka-dotted shirt. “It has celery and mayonnaise. What’s busy?”

“Forget it.” She looks around, her white head swiveling neatly as a snowy owl. “We need broccoli and cauliflower.”

“I’m on it. You stay here.” I leave her with the cart, run to the broccoli and bag it, then run to the cauliflower and bag it, and come back.

“No good.”

“What?”

“I want broccoli and cauliflower together.”

“I got it together.” I hold up both bags, one in each hand. “See?”

“No, they have to be
together.
In Florida, they have broccoli and cauliflower in the same bag.”

“No problem.” I take the bag of cauliflower and stuff it in the bag of broccoli. “Welcome to Pennsylvania.”

Mother Mary shakes her head. “At home, they have it in the same bag, cut up, and you cook it that way.”

“Well, this is your home, too, and we can take it, cut it up, and cook it together.”

She blinks. “This isn’t my home.”

“Yes, it is. You have your house here, and your house in Florida.”

“Only one is home.”

“We’ll see about that.” I sense we’re not fighting about vegetables anymore, as I’m astute that way, and in the Scottoline household, almost anything can turn into a power struggle, including vegetables.

Even the cruciferous become crucibles, if you follow.

So we move on to a fight in the next aisle, where they don’t carry Ensure, and to a fight in the aisle after that, where they don’t carry Dial soap.

I don’t see her problem. “Ma, what’s the big deal with Dial?”

“It’s laid, spelled backwards.”

Oh.

I hurry her through the checkout counter, where I try to stuff her in a recyclable bag, but they stop me.

Just kidding.

We go home and have dinner together, and I put the broccoli and cauliflower in the same pot, overcooking them so that the cauliflower turns a cadaverous white and the broccoli takes on a gangrenous hue.

“Delicious,” Mother Mary says with a smile.

“Pennsylvania’s not so bad, eh?”

“Shut up,” is all she says.